There I am, laying in a bed that isn't as comfortable as the one at home staring at the blank ceiling above me trying to fall asleep to the cries of the stray dogs. It's my first week here, every morning I wake up to the 'morning music' as they say of the crying roosters and other animals. I don't know if I'll last two months here. All the walls around me are plain white with crawling critters all different sizes, I sit up slowly and look across the room to see that my brother had already beaten me into waking up first, leaving me alone in the house upstairs. I slip on my rubber sandals that were as thick as a book and as heavy as a brick. My grandma thought it'd be best since my shoes from home didn't seem to last me the first two days, the streets there were harsh. As I was about to get up I saw a big cockroach crawling on the floor. I slowly take off my sandal and as soon as I throw it at the bug, it starts flying. I lost it there and ran downstairs screaming. "How'd I get here?" I asked myself.

It was the summer of 2014 when we were at the airport trying to figure out where to go and what to do. It was obviously our first time getting on a plane on our own. My brother and I had our luggage ready to go off to somewhere we've never been before with people we've never met before. Well, in person at least. Our flight took longer than three hours because of a storm but we made it safely to our grandparents and the adventure began. The first weeks were difficult because it took time to get settled in the house my bother and I were going to live in. Wednesday's were my favorite days, we would always ride the bus to a place called Tepalcingo. They have the day where the Tiangiz comes which is a really big market full of interesting things. My dad would send us money from the U.S. so we could buy things we wanted and that day my brother and I bought so many things it was hard to carry all of them. It was so different in Mexico, there were cops in every corner with a rifle in their arms and you had to pay for your own toilet paper at the entrance of the public restrooms. Mexico didn't treat me so well for the first month- I got sick to the point where I couldn't eat anything anymore because of the whole change I made. I guess you can call it home sick; they were feeding me off liquids the first month. My brother and I imagined clear rivers with beautiful colorful birds and unique clothes and people, that is where my mom is from. We ended up going to the parts of where my dad was born, but it was nothing like mom had explained it. There were stray wild dogs loose in every corner and drunk people everywhere. Everyday someone would end up going to the doctor to get the venom out of their body from the scorpion that stung them. I went to the doctor for a different reason.

Once I started feeling better, I started going out more. I noticed that the mosquitos there were very active but I never payed attention to it until one day I couldn't get up from bed. My body wouldn't move and I couldn't talk. I had Malaria. My brother came up and started seeing what was going on, he started yelling for my grandparents to go get help. There was no way I'd make it to a hospital. Even if I could, there wasn't one in town: just a single trained doctor who would come to see me. He gave me the strongest medicine he had. Getting Malaria in Mexico was the worst thing that happened to me. There was an earthquake that hit, it didn't do much damage but it was strong enough to move my brothers bed with him in it from side to side. He slept through the whole thing. Every night were rainstorms always to be expected and those nights we were always up brooming out the water that was coming inside. We'd discover more and more different weird critters each day too, like the tarantula that we found next to the soccer field.

I was amazed how much fun the kids had there in Mexico, especially having it be one of the poorest places. Too many things happened there to explain it all completely. I can't say that it was the best time of my life, but I also can't say it's been my worst. Being there made me realize so much. Everyone in that town has a smile on their face everyday and worked with what they had. My second month there was way better than the first, I felt free. Every afternoon my brother and I would climb the mountains with the friends we made and stand at the very top and look over the small town. It wasn't the ugly parts of Mexico after all, seeing how the people there were with one another and how they lived made it beautiful. Mexico is definitely a place I will remember and if I ever go back, I know how it'll treat me and I'll know how to work with it.